Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing technique of processing images captured by various image capturing apparatuses (modalities).
Description of the Related Art
In the medical field, image diagnosis is performed using medical images. A doctor finds a lesion portion (a portion which is suspected as a lesion) based on imaging findings obtained from images, and determines the type, grade of malignancy, degree of progression, and the like of an abnormality. Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 8-336517 (to be referred to as patent literature 1 hereinafter) discloses a technique of observing a temporal change of a lesion portion by aligning images of an object captured at different dates/times with each other to display the difference between the images.
However, image diagnosis requires more information representing the features of a lesion portion in addition to information about hardness obtained by elastography and/or a temporal change obtained by the technique described in patent literature 1. The present invention has been made in consideration of the above problem, and provides new information representing the features of a lesion portion which is deformed differently with respect to the behavior of the lesion portion when an object is deformed.